La Crisis Financiera Global Implicaciones para Asia

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La Crisis Financiera GlobalImplicaciones para
Asia

• Por Reihana Mohideen -- Filipinas

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Tres Puntos Principales

• 1. Removiendo el mito de que las economías
  asiáticas son refugios seguros relativamente
  no afectados por la crisis de los países
  imperialistas.
• I.e. disociación
• 2. La otra gran crisis que enfrenta el
  capitalismo La crisis ambiental genera mayor
  urgencía
• La necesidad de tomar las ideas/teorías de
  eco-socialistas y ecologistas políticos al
  discutir alternativas socialistas.
• 3. Implicaciones para la estrategia socialista y
  la primacía de la política en este debate.

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1. Asia Disociada, Refugio Seguro?

• Tanto como 30 de los activos asiáticos son de
  propiedad extanjera y vinculados por bonos,
  préstamos y mercados derivados, mientras que los
  más pequeños también son significantes.
• En los primeros ocho meses de este año la fuga de
  capital de Asia alcanzó 38 millardos.
• Capital líquido
• También en la medida que las compañias
  capitalistas se retiran por falta de crédito.
  (India,Filipinas)

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El Crecimiento Asiático en Declive

• Se espera que el crecimiento del PIB agregado en
  el sureste asiático desacelere a 5.4 en 2008,
  significantemente menor que el crecimiento de
  6.5 alcanzado en 2007
• Las proyecciones de crecimiento para Filipinas,
  Singapur y Vietnam están decayendo en forma
  significativa.
• Las proyecciones de inflación son las más altas
  en una década, y la tasa se espera que aumente
  rápidamente especialmente en países como Vietnam.
• Asian Development Bank Outlook Updates

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Segunda Crisis Asiática?

• Los riesgos de una segunda crisis asiática han
  disminuido pero no desaparecido.
• Si la crisis en los EE.UU. se agrava, Asia se
  verá obligada a sufrir efectos económicos mucho
  más graves, incluyendo una abrupta reversión en
  la entrada de capital extranjero.

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Dependencia en los Mercados de Exportación para
crecer.

• Exportaciones como PIB
• Vietnam 76.8
• Taiwan 73.8
• Indonesia 45.6
• India 21.2
• 25 de las exportaciones finales van a E.E.U.U.
• Todavía fuertemente dependiente de las
  exportaciones y no de los mercados nacionales.

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Crecimiento del PIB, Asia del Este
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La crisis Asiática de 1997-98 Lecciones
amargas.

• Para Asia, la crisis de Wall Street es una
  reproducción en una escala mucho mayor, de la
  crisis financiera asiática de 1997, que hizo que
  bajaran las economías incendiarias de los
  tigres en el este asiático.
• El rescate masivo de Wall Street recuerda a la
  gente de los miles de millones que el FMI negoció
  después del '97 con el pretexto de ayudarlos - el
  dinero que se utilizó en lugar de rescatar a los
  inversores extranjeros tanto que hace difícil
  venderle la idea a la gente.

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Puntos acerca del cambio climático El impacto en
Asia UN FCCC data

• IMPACTS
• Temperature
• Warming above the global mean in central Asia,
  the Tibetan Plateau, northern, eastern and
  southern Asia.
• Warming similar to the global mean in Southeast
  Asia.
• Precipitation, snow and ice
• Increasing reduction in snow and ice in
  Himalayan and Tibetan Plateau Glaciers
• Extreme Events
• Increasing frequency and intensity of extreme
  events particularly droughts during the summer
  months and El Niño events
• increase in extreme rainfall and winds
  associated with tropical cyclones in
• East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia
• intense rainfall events causing landslides and
  severe floods
• heat waves/hot spells in summer of longer
  duration, more intense and more frequent,
  particularly in East Asia

• VULNERABILITIES
• Water
• Increasing water stress to over a hundred
  million people due to decrease of freshwater
  availability in Central, South, East and
  Southeast Asia, particularly in large river
  basins such as Changjiang.
• Increase in the number and severity of glacial
  melt-related floods.
• Agriculture and food security
• Decreases in crop yield for many parts of Asia
  putting many millions of people at risk from
  hunger.
• Increase land degradation and desertification.
• Agriculture may expand in productivity in
  northern areas.
• Health
• Heat stress and changing patterns in the
  occurrence of disease vectors affecting health,
  i.e. Malaria
• Increases in endemic morbidity and mortality
  due to diarrhoeal disease in south and Southeast
  Asia.
• Increase in the abundance and/or toxicity of
  cholera in south Asia.
• Coastal Zones
• Tens of millions of people in low-lying coastal
  areas of south and Southeast Asia affected by sea
  level rise and an increase in the intensity of
  tropical cyclones.
• Coastal inundation is likely to seriously
  affect the aquaculture industry and
  infrastructure particularly in heavily-populated
• megadeltas.
• Stability of wetlands, mangroves, and coral
  reefs increasingly threatened.

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2. The Capitalist Environmental Crisis

• Added urgency as capitalist solutions will be at
  the expense of the environment.
• Sustainable economic models
• Drawing from the thinking/theories of the
  left-ecology/environmental movements political
  ecology, eco-socialism.
• Cubas leadership here, 85 organic agricultural
  production, only possible in a planned economy.
• Issues
• What kind of technological development and
  transfer? Third generation, polluting
  technology?
• Ideological debates, debunking Green capitalism
  in the form of carbon-markets, etc?

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3. Socialist Strategy Primacy of PoliticsThe
Importance of Marx

• How to interpret Marx for these times? Marx of
  Capital and/or of the Communist Manifesto
• Commandante Chavez emphasis on Marx of the
  Manifesto, the Marx of the Political Struggle
  Movement haunting/challenging capitalism.
• But against a dogmatic Marx, including the
  dogma of economism
• Marx will not return as a political inspiration
  to the left until it is understood that his
  writings should not be treated as political
  programs, authoritative or otherwise, nor as
  descriptions of the actual situation of world
  capitalism today, but rather as guides to his way
  of understanding the nature of capitalist
  development. (Hosbawm)

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Political Power

• Despite the severity of the problems facing
  global capitalism today, there is no
  inevitability about the automatic collapse of
  the system.
• How can capitalism restructure successfully?
• Solutions will be at the expense of the labouring
  masses their living environment. Social
  movements alone, struggling around particular
  issues, are inadequate to face the challenges
  today.
• Need to build political movements of the
  labouring masses, which struggle for power and
  system change.
• Agents of change?

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The Revolutionary Left Response Philippines

• Crisis of the Capitalist System
• Immediate calls
• (i) Nationalise finance sector under popular
  control (ii) Institutional Transparency (iii)
  Socialise Profits, not the Losses (iv) For a
  government of the working masses and the poor.
• Launching a new anti-capitalist, mass, party
• Mobilise, organise the unorganised new forces,
  based on community, factory and university-based
  local structures (councils, peoples assemblies)

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Asian Alternatives?

• Alternatives not based on a national
  independence model, simply retreating behind
  high protectionist barriers.
• Need regional models, based on mutually
  beneficial trade and exchange. Eg ALBA,
• ASEAN? Engage or not to?
• Viet Nam in ASEAN an ally of the left, mass
  movements?

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Asian Models

• Do China and Viet Nam provide alternative models
  for Asian left?
• Generally viewed with skepticism even criticism
• China Many in the left believe that market
  socialism has been a vehicle for introducing
  capitalist relations resulting in huge
  inequalities.
• Viet Nams socialist-market economy is also
  viewed with some (but lesser) skepticism
  concerns about increasing privatisation,
  decreasing capital controls, but strong and
  vibrant mass organisations.

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Global Alternatives Solutions

• Equadorian Minister for the Economy
• We cannot talk about a new financial
  architecture without talking about transforming
  the international division of labour the
  re-organisation of the international economy.
• Ponder this and the implications for how we
  approach our strategies and alternatives.
• No simply Asian solutions, or even only South
  American ones (opportunities yes, but not
  solutions)

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Politics in the Imperialist Countries

• How will the working people respond? How will the
  trade unions and the social movements respond?
• US organised movement still weak to pose an
  alternative, but some important developments
• Europe Better opportunities for the left.

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Proposals

• Develop a South America-Asia axis based on the
  left movements (and not solely diplomatic ties).
• Delegates from South America to attend a
  socialism conference in the Philippines next
  year.
• Networks/Institutes here to have an Asian
  program.